AI agents fueled a frenzy of startup building at the Consensus Miami EasyA hackathon

TL;DR

The EasyA Hackathon at Consensus Miami 2026 attracted nearly 1,000 developers focused on building AI agent products. This event marks a shift towards AI-powered applications in the blockchain space, aiming to foster billion-dollar startups.

Key points

Nearly 1,000 developers competed at the EasyA Hackathon
Focus on building AI agent products
Participants included developers from Microsoft and Google
Event aims to create billion-dollar startups
Previous hackathons produced a $10 billion company

Mentioned in this story

EasyAConsensusMicrosoftGoogle

BaseSolana

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — At the EasyA Hackathon tucked inside Consensus Miami 2026, the energy felt less like a traditional crypto developer event and more like a live audition for the next generation of the intersection of blockchain and AI-native startups.

Nearly 1,000 developers competed at the venue, some from established crypto ecosystems like Base and Solana, and others arriving from companies like Microsoft and Google, all racing to build products around one theme that kept surfacing in conversation after conversation: AI agents.

The focus on AI agents had already emerged earlier this year at the EasyA x Consensus Hong Kong hackathon, where organizers described 2026 as the “Year of the Application Layer” as developers increasingly shifted from infrastructure tools toward AI-powered consumer applications and autonomous agents.

For brothers Dom and Philip Kwok, co-founders of EasyA, that evolution is exactly the point. What began as a small hackathon series in Austin, Texas, during Consensus 2023 has quickly transformed into one of crypto’s most closely watched builder gatherings, attracting young passionate developers with increasingly teams with serious technical pedigrees.

Their ambition for the event is bluntly simple. “We want billion-dollar companies coming out of EasyA,” Dom Kwok said during an interview with CoinDesk at the hackathon floor. “We’ve already had, out of our other hackathons, a $10 billion company.”

That success story has become part of EasyA lore. One Harvard team that pitched at a previous EasyA event went on to found “Cognition AI,” which the Kwoks say is now valued at roughly $10 billion. Another former participant, Axal, is building stablecoin yield products backed by bitcoin.

Other alumni have reportedly gone through Y Combinator, raised from top venture firms and processed hundreds of millions in transactions. The message to developers walking through the Miami event was clear: this is no longer just a couple-days coding competition, it’s increasingly being framed as a launchpad for venture-scale companies.

This year, however, the center of gravity has unmistakably shifted toward agentic AI. Coinbase sponsored challenges around x402, an emerging framework developers are experimenting with for AI-agent payments and interactions, while Solana and Solana Mobile pushed teams toward mobile-first applications and consumer experiences.

“Lots of developers [are] really excited about AI agentic workloads,” Dom said, pointing to the recent wave of massive venture funding flowing into AI-agent infrastructure startups.

Some of the projects already circulating around the venue reflected how far builders are stretching the category. One team called Praxis was working on blockchain-connected drones controllable through smartphones, what the brothers described as “the next Palantir on the blockchain.” Another startup was building what they called “hyper-intelligent AI,” software designed to turn text prompts into physical 3D objects. “You could put in a prompt and say, ‘Build me a microscope,’ and it will actually build it for you,” Phil said. “It’s like the next phase of taking ChatGPT from something informational into something embodied.”